Hello, I am staring this post in order to get your opinion about DJI build quality in general. I know you will say DJI is the leading producer of drones and their products are the best on the market and I cannot deny that but it seems their quality control is very inconsistent or sell low quality products in my country (Bulgaria) So please take a minute to read about my experience with the brand. I believe I am not unexperienced user that complains due to my own misunderstanding or misuse of the product. As a hobbyist and engineer I have built and used successfully 2 DIY drones before that and a few planes. I also want to note in advance that I have never crashed ot exposed my drone to moisture or extreme dust. It’s been treated with love and respect and here is my experience with phantoms so far

  

  

   Almost 1.5 years ago I bought P3S. After 3-4 flights I noticed I have great amount of jello in all videos. Additionally, the gimbal was tilted by default even calibrated. After a research and contacting DJI they confirmed its not normal and replaced my drone. However, it took 40 days to send it back and get the new one. The new one had slightly better video but was significantly more unstable in flight and noisy. Obviously not balanced motor causing vibrations because I get a tool for balancing the propellers and balanced them perfectly but vibrations did not disappear and were causing jello at times. I was happily using it to fly and make videos once - twice a month until the video electronics burn out after 9 months. It was another 40 days in repair. Getting it out of the box for the next flight I noticed those popular cracks around the motor's bolts were started to spread. I had no time to fly for the next 2-3 months but those cracks were spreading each time I take a look around all the bolts. I had to order aftermarket aluminums mounting plates in order to mount the motors because those crack get large even though I was not flying it. I could not return it for repair of the shell even though I had 1 more year warranty left because cracks were supposed to be caused by a crash and out of warranty. I never flied it again and sold it for parts.  

  

   

  

   At that point I decided to buy P3A for longer range flights thinking that my first P3S was just unlucky purchase. It was way better than the P3S from the beginning. No vibrations, good video, I was in love until after a few months the remote controller just did not start. OK I had that experience already - 40 days without a drone and it arrived with a new remote after warranty repairs. It was flying great again until yesterday when the video feed stopped. Burned video electronics or camera as it seems and again sent away for 40 days.

  

  

   After having all that experience mostly dealing with warranty and aftermarket repairs do you believe its normal to have a product that spent a lot of time away in repair? i am also afraid that after the warranty period DJY products will break pretty soon without reasonable in price options for aftermarket repair. I had decided to upgrade to mavic air pretty soon but I truly lost my faith in the brand. I started to think that they bet on unexperienced user that will crash the drone before it had a chance to brake by its own.

  

  

I will appreciate your opinion if it’s just my bad luck or DJY has truly lower the quality making products that barely last for an year?

  

I have three Phantoms and none of them have required warranty work or even expired warranty work.  I have nothing but admiration for DJI products.

Fantastic products - owned 7 DJI drones to date - not one has 'flown away' and I've never had to even replace a prop on any of them.

Other than having occasional batches of "bad plastic" used in the production of the shells, There seems to be no pattern of faults in DJI products.

Asparuh, we're sorry for the inconvenience. The products maybe not perfect, but we're still keeping learning and improving. If anything failed during the warranty period, feel free to contact us, we're glad to help.

Well im in a bit of a catch 22 situation ive sent my p4p back twice for waranty repairs and yes it took some time to get it back but that was thru no fault of dji it came down to very slow transport system here.
To be honest i think dji products are the best on the market by far for the price range i would definatly buy more if i had the funds spare without hesitation.
But yes as susan has pointed out they may not be perfect but well think about one thing what is?
Can you find a better product out there for the same price cause if you can please let us know about it.

I agreed in the part : Dji do a Good Hardware

I've owned 3 DJI drones to date. FW450, P1 and P4P+. So far, so good. Save for little things like like the occasional and annoying Ultrasonic failure message, I'm a big fan of DJI.

Jeff

ALABAMA Posted at 2018-4-19 04:54
Other than having occasional batches of "bad plastic" used in the production of the shells, There seems to be no pattern of faults in DJI products.

"There seems to be no pattern of faults in DJI products"
That imo is even the worst, had it just been consistent it had been to deal with as the solution would be the same, it seem that the QA and test part before packing would need improvement.

When a new customer come in here and blame DJI for delivery of a battery DoA, it might be wrong, it could be from a seller who had it on the shelf for to long killing the battery. If ordered and delivered from the DJI store this must not happen.

When thinking of the RC charge problems and the solution that seem to have solved it to many, all the different issues we read about here might be a result of bad soldering and then anyway a consistent pattern resulting in all kind of strange errors and fall from the sky, who knows?

DJI Susan Posted at 2018-4-19 22:05
Asparuh, we're sorry for the inconvenience. The products maybe not perfect, but we're still keeping learning and improving. If anything failed during the warranty period, feel free to contact us, we're glad to help.

Thank you for your honesty there Susan, it is refreshing. I like many others have nothin but praise for these aircraft. I have three, and I am extremely happy with them , barring the odd maintenance issue, but they are just maintenance issues.

I have found DJI products to be of very high quality. My first one was a flamewheel 450. Just like everything man has made some odd things do happen. I have been into RC models for 36 years and never cease to be amazed at the new drones DJI bring out for us. You can sense excitement already for the Mavic Pro 2 or Phantom 5 and the surprises we are going to get with them.

I have owned 11 DJI drones and still have 3 of them. I have had a few other brands which were garbage compared to the quality of the DJIs.
Any company producing cutting edge technology will have growing pains as they continue to develop their products. I think DJI does very well.
I have only had to deal with them twice on warranty issues and both were handled great. One was a swelling battery that was promptly replaced and the other was a Mavic platinum with a lame camera. It was replaced with a brand new bird (Not a refurb). This process took only 11 days including shipping both ways.
I think DJI has earned their place in the market and does a fine job of both design and build of their products.

embayweather Posted at 2018-4-20 04:03
Thank you for your honesty there Susan, it is refreshing. I like many others have nothin but praise for these aircraft. I have three, and I am extremely happy with them , barring the odd maintenance issue, but they are just maintenance issues.

I'm glad to hear everything works as expected. Thanks for choosing DJI!

I am a new user and didn't have experience with DJI. I was observing the company for quite a while and perhaps they are the most advanced consumer drone manufacturer.

Having said that, I finally decided to get my first DJI drone and started with Air. The camera was blurry on one side and I decided to contact the support. It took them almost a week to confirm it's not normal and now I am facing a lengthy warranty repair process that starts with sending the drone abroad (and pay for that). It's blossoming spring here and I lost an opportunity to take images with drone.

Problems happen everywhere but it's disappointing that the factory QC failed and makes me have to wait several weeks until the drone is (hopefully) brought back into operational state. I wonder if my "DJI Care" program will be extended due to that? I guess not. Because of that experience, I don't rate DJI too highly in terms of quality though looking at the market it's hard to find anything much better anyways